University Quality Assurance And Enhancement

As the world become more and more concern about the quality of higher education, higher education quality assurance has become a global movement. Almost all countries have correspondingly established a quality assurance system for higher education. With the implementation of evaluation of college undergraduate teaching level in China, the dominant position of university in quality assurance will gradually appear and regression. The construction and research of universities internal quality assurance system becomes a research hotspot. However, universities usually put more focus within the process of "student input-train-graduate". And, regard the graduation of students as ending of the whole process of quality assurance. This neglects the important role of universities external stakeholder feedback in university quality assurance and enhancement. According to total quality management concepts, input-process-output is an iterative closed-loop, therefore, we should pay attention to the feedback of the Government, employers, alumni after the graduate output in order to closing the quality assurance loop. Through the analysis of information theory, systems theory, control theory, total quality management theory and stakeholder theory, the foundation of university external stakeholders' information feedback mechanisms was built. Then it demonstrated the dialectical relationship between university external information feedback and university educational quality assurance and enhancement. "Stones from other hills may serve to polish jade".This article conducted in-depth case study on the Hong Kong and Australian universities external stakeholders'information feedback mechanism and analyzed its relatively sound external information feedback mechanism. Also, it analyzed the role of (SAR) government, non-governmental organizations, universities and alumni in its quality assurance system and the channels and processes the university used to obtain external feedback information, etc. The lessons we can draw from their experience are:government, society non-governmental organizations and university should participate collaboratively; university should set up a dedicated institution for collecting stakeholders' feedback information; information should be gathered periodically; external stakeholders'feedback information must be used effectively. Finally, based on the analysis of the necessity and feasibility in the establishment of universities information feedback mechanism, then we tried to construct our universities external stakeholder information feedback mechanism. To build an university external stakeholder feedback mechanism derives from its philosophy of the pursuit of excellence. University external information feedback mechanism is an organizational system, which include government, non-governmental organizations, alumni, employers and universities. Through the motivation/ lever mechanism, evaluation mechanism, the main body mechanism, communication, cooperation and coordination mechanism and long-term mechanism to form a feedback system that connected the universities and the external key stakeholders, thus contribute to closing the iterative loop of university quality assurance system.